Melinda Curtis - Dandelion Wishes

Francie appeared at the Subaru’s fender, huffing and clutching a shoebox under her arm. “She’s not dead.”

Emma’s limbs turned to liquid and she slid to the ground, landing on her tailbone, asphalt scraping her legs. She ignored the pain. Tracy was alive.

“There, there.” Francie knelt beside Emma, smelling of breath mints and garlic. “Company policy forbids me from telling you what happened, but you came every Sunday for more than five months. It broke my heart to turn you away.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Emma choked out.

“Are you okay to drive? Want me to call someone?”

Granny Rose. Her grandmother had practically raised Emma while her mother established a career as a cutthroat trial attorney. After Tracy, it was Granny Rose that Emma turned to with her problems. She had always looked up to her grandmother’s wisdom, wit and courage. But Granny Rose was eighty and lived hours away in Harmony Valley, in the northernmost corner of Sonoma County.

“Fine. I’m fine.” Or she would be when she could catch her breath. Emma scrubbed at her eyes. “Do you...do you know where Tracy is?” It would be exactly like Tracy’s self-made millionaire brother, Will, to have found a specialist in Switzerland and moved her there.

“Francie!” a male voice rumbled from beneath the portico. “I hear you talking to that girl. Don’t make trouble for yourself.”

Francie frowned and pressed the shoebox into Emma’s hands. “I can’t say more, but I wanted you to have this.” Using the car for balance, the receptionist stood. “You take care.”

Emma lifted the shoebox lid. More than twenty thumb-size Carina Career dolls stared vacantly up at her, one for every week Emma had tried to come and visit Tracy.

A slip of paper was tucked in the corner of the box.

Had Tracy written her a note?

Emma reached for the paper with trembling fingers.

An invitation to visit? Or a request to stay away?

An address was scrawled in thin, spidery handwriting on Greenhaven stationery, too neat to have been written by her friend. Emma made out a familiar address in Harmony Valley.

Tracy’s.

* * *

“THIS IS GOING to be good.” The false enthusiasm left a sour taste in Will Jackson’s mouth. He opened the front door of his childhood home. “Dad’s been lonely with both of us gone. And now he’ll have a full house. You and me, just like old times.”

Tracy walked in, looking to all appearances like any other twenty-six-year-old in blue jeans, a beige T-shirt and short, tousled blond hair. Until she spoke. “I want. To...to go. To—”

“I know you want to go back to your own apartment,” Will interrupted. There was no way he’d let his little sister return to San Francisco, to the place she shared in the city with Emma. Tracy was still fragile. Oh, she got around all right, her broken ribs and broken leg having healed. But when her skull smashed into the car window it caused damage, resulting in aphasia, a language disorder. Her speech would probably always be halting, although specialists promised it would get better as long as Tracy fought.

But Tracy had given up fighting to improve.

“You’ll go back after your next round of speech therapy.” If Will could persuade, bribe or exhort her to return for a new form of transcranial direct-current stimulation—brain shock therapy. He had two months to convince her before the test trials started. “Here’s your cell phone.” Miraculously, Tracy’s iPhone had survived the crash. Will had waited until now to give it to her. Harmony Valley was surrounded by several mountains that prohibited more than an occasional bar of cell-phone service. He didn’t want her texting Emma, the so-called friend who’d nearly killed her.

Controlling and overprotective? Maybe he was. But his sister had brain damage and couldn’t be trusted to understand what her friend had done, let alone make appropriate decisions right now.

Tracy scowled at the phone. She scowled at the saggy green microfiber couch and worn brown leather recliner. She scowled at the stuffed trout on the wall and the orange burlap curtains. She’d scowled at everything in the past month to the point where her doctor at the rehabilitation hospital thought she might make more progress at home.

“You’ve got a way to go until you can live on your own again.” Much as it worried Will to think about Tracy living alone, odds were against him being able to protect her forever. But if things worked out the way he wanted here in Harmony Valley, those odds evened out.

Her scowl intensified. “My. Car.”

Will shook his head. “Doctor’s orders. No driving.”

Tracy opened her mouth, presumably to argue, but closed it again and stomped off toward her room. A door slammed, shaking the entire house. Shaking Will’s resolve.

The family portrait over the fireplace tilted. His mother, immortalized at age thirty-nine, gave him a lopsided, infectious smile. He set the family photo to rights, wishing it was as easy to right the rifts in the family and keep everyone safe.

Will’s father Ben came in through the kitchen door carrying a large duffel bag with Tracy’s belongings. His boots and faded jeans showed the wear and tear of years working on the farm. “Where’s Tracy?”

“In her room.”

Ben put the duffel on the scarred kitchen table. He grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water from the sink. “Give her time. She went from being an independent, healthy woman to someone who’s had to depend on others for everything.”

“She shouldn’t have gone to that conference in Las Vegas with Emma.” Just the thought of Emma Willoughby induced chest-tightening resentment. She’d walked away from the car accident unscathed.

“Son, I know you want to protect your sister, but people have got to make their own choices.” Ben rubbed a hand back and forth over his thinning blond-gray hair. “I was wrong to let you shut Emma out. I was afraid of losing Tracy. But now—”

“There’s only one choice here, Dad.” There would be no repeat mistakes. No playing with fire. “Aren’t you even the least bit angry at Emma for what’s happened to Tracy?”

“Of course I’m angry. It isn’t fair, what Tracy’s going through. But those girls have been friends since they were toddlers.” His father leaned against the sink, watching Will sit at the head of the kitchen table. “Where one went, the other followed. And oftentimes, they followed you.”

“Tracy’s not following Emma anymore.” The first thing Will had done upon learning the details of the accident was ban Emma from the hospital. The road had been clear, the day sunny, Tracy dozing in the passenger seat. There were no drugs or alcohol in Emma’s system. She hadn’t been on the phone or texting. And yet, Emma had crashed the car. She was to blame, the same as he knew Harmony Valley Grain was at fault for his mother’s death. “Emma’s too much like her grandmother. Too irresponsible.”

“I like Rose. Nobody can say that old girl doesn’t live life to the fullest. Tracy and Emma have always done the same.” Ben arched faded eyebrows. “Maybe you ought to try it.”

“Yes, because look where it got Tracy. Responsibility comes before fun.” That was how Will had become a millionaire so quickly. And now he was determined to help revitalize his hometown before he increased his fortune further. If only Rose could be made to see that change wasn’t a four-letter word. “Rose may be on the town council, but she doesn’t understand her responsibilities. She won’t even consider our proposal to rezone the Henderson property for a winery.”

“Sometimes it takes more subtlety than a hammer, son. You and your friends tried to ram change on Rose like an unexpected enema.”